Performance Anxiety in Media Culture


Book Description

Performance Anxiety in Media Culture explores the culture of performance anxiety in the media-saturated contemporary world. It uses comparative case studies including film, social media, and popular music to examine the ways that personal concern regarding self-presentation becomes transformed into shared cultural expressions through the use of media technologies. Three initial chapters are dedicated to exploring the work of Erving Goffman, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard as critical for a thorough understanding of how implications of a range of recent transformations in the methods for staging social performances are staged and in the ways that they are experienced and interpreted by others. Three subsequent chapters explore diverse case studies in the culture of performance anxiety: the representation of such anxieties in recent French cinema, the appearance of them in the world of fashion-based 'outfit of the day' blogs, and the attempt to refine a more fixed social persona in the nostalgic culture of rockabilly music.







The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety


Book Description

Why are some performers exhilarated and energized about performing in public, while others feel a crushing sense of fear and dread, and experience public performance as an overwhelming challenge that must be endured? These are the questions addressed in this book, the first rigorous exposition of this complex phenomenon.




Performance Anxiety in Media Culture


Book Description

Performance Anxiety in Media Culture explores the culture of performance anxiety in the media-saturated contemporary world. It uses comparative case studies including film, social media, and popular music to examine the ways that personal concern regarding self-presentation becomes transformed into shared cultural expressions through the use of media technologies. Three initial chapters are dedicated to exploring the work of Erving Goffman, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard as critical for a thorough understanding of how implications of a range of recent transformations in the methods for staging social performances are staged and in the ways that they are experienced and interpreted by others. Three subsequent chapters explore diverse case studies in the culture of performance anxiety: the representation of such anxieties in recent French cinema, the appearance of them in the world of fashion-based 'outfit of the day' blogs, and the attempt to refine a more fixed social persona in the nostalgic culture of rockabilly music.




Playing Scared


Book Description

Stage fright is one of the human psyche's deepest fears. Over half of British adults name public speaking as their greatest fear, even greater than heights and snakes. Laurence Olivier learned to adapt to it, as have actors Salma Hayek and Hugh Grant. Musicians such as Paul McCartney and Adele have battled it and learned to cope. Playing Scared is Sara Solovitch's journey into the myriad causes of stage fright and the equally diverse ways we can overcome it. As a young child, Sara studied piano and fell in love with music. As a teen, she played Bach and Mozart at her hometown's annual music festival, but was overwhelmed by stage fright, which led her to give up aspirations of becoming a professional pianist. In her late fifties, Sara gave herself a one-year deadline to tame performance anxiety and play before an audience. She resumed music lessons, while exploring meditation, exposure therapy, cognitive therapy, biofeedback and beta blockers, among many other remedies. She practiced performing in airports, hospitals and retirement homes. Finally, the day before her sixtieth birthday, she gave a formal recital for an audience of fifty. Using her own journey as inspiration, Sara has written a thoughtful and insightful cultural history of performance anxiety and a tribute to pursuing personal growth at any age.




Navigating the Digital Landscape


Book Description

Rapid digitalization has led to the evolution of customer behaviour and for any business it has become imperative to understand customer behaviour in the digital world – Navigating the Digital Landscape explores a wide range of topics to help the reader harness the positive aspects of digital commerce and mitigate risks.




The Astructural Bias Charge


Book Description

This collection of outstanding essays addresses the concern of an astructural bias. Contemporary interactionists and their critics, social theorists, and students of sociology who are interested in assessing the ability of SI to fully address the social circumstances and social problems of an increasingly precarious world should read this book.




Performance and Cultural Politics


Book Description

Performance and Cultural Politics is a groundbreaking collection of essays which explore the historical and cultural territories of performance, written by the foremost scholars in the field. The essays, exploring performance art, theatre, music and dance, range from Oscar Wilde to Eric Clapton; from the Rose Theatre to U.S. Holocaust museums. The topic includes: * Sex Play: Stereotype, Pose and Dildo * Grave Performances: The Cultural Politics of Memory * Genealogies: Critical Performances * Identity Politics: Passing, Carnival and the Law In the concluding section, `Performer's Performance', performance artist Robbie McCauley offers the practitioner's perspective on performance studies. Interdisciplinary, thought-provoking and rich in new ideas, Performance and Cultural Politics is a landmark in the emerging field of performance studies.




Anxiety Rx


Book Description

From physician and neuroscientist Russell Kennedy, MD comes an award-winning book that offers a revolutionary, life-changing approach to healing anxiety. Break the cycle of anxiety with the newly upgraded and expanded second edition. After years of trying different therapies for his debilitating anxiety without success, Dr. Russell Kennedy had an epiphany: anxiety does not start in the brain. Anxiety starts in the body, where trauma is stored and physical and emotional perception begin. Alarm bells originating in the body are what trigger those anxious thoughts that we call anxiety, and Russ realized that true healing starts only when we learn not to conflate the two. He understood that existing therapies focused only on the mind would never get to the root of the problem—at best, they could help manage symptoms, but they’d never truly heal anxiety. Wanting to make a difference for the millions who suffer from anxiety disorder, Russ created Anxiety Rx, a book that blends his personal story with medical science, neuroscience, and developmental psychology. Readers learn how to sever the connection between the somatic alarm and the flood of anxious thoughts—in the process they begin to heal old trauma and gain a sense of control previously unknown. Russ offers techniques not only for our thinking minds, but for our feeling bodies, changing not just our mindset, but our “body-set.” Unraveling the intricate relationship between anxiety, the body, and the mind, Anxiety Rx offers a profound path toward healing and growth.




Geographies of Learning


Book Description

Maps the divisions that stall the production of knowledge in theatre and performance studies, queer studies, and women's studies. Each of Jill Dolan's three academic locations — theatre and performance studies, lesbian/gay/queer studies (LGQ studies), and women's studies — is both interdisciplinary and fraught with divisions between theory and practice. As teacher, administrator, author, and performer, Dolan places her professional labor in relation to issues of community, pedagogy, public culture, administration, university missions, and citizenship. She works from the assumption that the production and dissemination of knowledge can be forms of activism, extending conversations on radical politics in the academy by other writers, such as Cary Nelson, Michael Berube, Gerald Graff, and Richard Ohmann. The five interconnected essays in Geographies of Learning map the divisions and dissensions that stall the production of progressive knowledge in theatre and performance studies, LGQ studies, and women's studies, while at the same time exploring some of the theoretical and pedagogical tools these fields have to offer one another.